In a post on the official Outlook blog, Microsoft also takes some time to talk about what it claims are the advantages of Outlook.com over Gmail, including offering a way for users to link their address book to social networking services such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Outlook.com also offers build in access to other Microsoft online services such as SkyDrive.

Microsoft also once again talked about how Outlook.com doesn't try to flood users with ads generated by emails, stating, " ... it won't use the contents of your personal email to show you ads; in fact, you won't see ads when reading email from friends."

In order to transfer emails from a Gmail account to Outlook.com, Microsoft says users first must sign up for an Outlook.com account (duh). The blog then shows how to add a forwarding address in Gmail so that all of the emails are sent to your Outlook.com address. You can then go into your Outlook.com settings and create a way for it to use your Gmail address when you send email.

The blog also shows how to use Outlook.com's People page to import all of your Gmail contacts into your Outlook.com account. Finally, Microsoft offers a tool called TrueSwitch that imports all of your old Gmail emails over to Outlook.com.